The 15th European Conference on Thermoelectrics (ECT2017) was held September 25-27, 2017 at the A. Luciani” Padua Congress Centre, Padova / Italy. A total of 181 (oral and poster) papers were presented at the conference, which featured over 200 delegates.
The first day of the ECT kicked off with a presentation by Claudia Felser (Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (CPfS), Dresden, Germany) who provided an inspiring discourse on influence of topology on the properties of solids and how these insights might benefit thermoelectric research. A diverse range of thermoelectric topics were broached on this day, ranging from oxide materials, through hybrids and composites, films and nanostructures, theory and modelling to applications. Additional invited talks were given by Philippe Jund (ICG Montpellier), Nick Bennett (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh) and Mauro Brignone (CRF, Orbassano). The day ended with a welcome reception in the lobby of the conference center.
The second day featured invited presentations by Muhammet Toprak (KTH, Stockholm), Daniel Zuckermann (Isabellenhütte, Dillenburg), Bartlomije Wiendlocha (AGH University, Krakow), David Berardan (Université Paris-Sud, Orsay) and Anthony Powell (University of Reading). Other work presented on this day included half Heusler materials, sulphides and selenides, and modules and TEGs. The Conference Dinner was held at the Centro Culturale Altinate/San Gaetano in downtown Padua. During the Conference Dinner, the ECT2017 poster prizes sponsored by the European (ETS), the German (DTG) and the Italian (AIT) Thermoelectric Societies were awarded to Monika Raja Thulasimani (Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin), Terumasa Tadano (NIMS, Tsukuba) and Alexey Osipkov (Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Moscow) and the location of the ECT2019 (Cyprus) was announced. Harald Böttner, former head of department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, was awarded the European Thermoelectric Society’s (ETS) award of honor for his many years of thermoelectric research and his commitment to the ETS (read also the news release of the Fraunhofer IPM).
On the final day of the conference, Mike Reece (Queen Mary University, London), Eric Alleno (ICMPE, Thiais) and Daniele Marré (Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa) gave invited talks. The conference concluded with closing remarks.
The talks were accompanied by a series of tutorials on fundamentals and applications of thermoelectricity, on nanostructures and material characterization. Many of the presented papers will be published in the ECT2017conference proceedings as a special issue of the Materials Today: Proceedings (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/materials-today-proceedings).
